


if you want to find something

by keskasi



Series: lights in the shadow [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Awkwardness, Elf Feels, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Grey Warden Feels, Mage Feels, Mage Origin, brief references to mage/circle abuse (nothing heavier than in-game), surana has some issues to work thru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 19:16:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3621183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keskasi/pseuds/keskasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She looks away.</p><p>-</p><p>In the Deep Roads, Surana stumbles on some memories of being an elf at Kinloch Hold, and Alistair wants to make something perfectly clear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you want to find something

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.”   
― J.R.R. Tolkien,  _The Hobbit_

 

—

 

The Deep Roads should make her claustrophobic, Surana thinks. Miles of stone lie above her head, separating her from the wind and the sun that she has grown to love so fiercely. But the Roads are so vast, even in ruins, and she spent most of her life in small spaces, tucked between bookshelves, reading in a corner of the basement storeroom, her back resting against a sack of grain, knees to her chest.

She doesn’t particularly want to go back, especially after Jowan and Uldred. It’s nice, though, to know she’s still able to navigate the close press of stone and smallness. One day, surely, it will be required of her again.

Of all of her companions, Morrigan and Alistair seem the most uncomfortable with the Roads. Morrigan hides it well, but Surana can see the discomfort in her eyes when they come upon a caved-in tunnel, forever sealed away from the light. She is careful never to take her into the narrow, twisting paths that she and Oghren pick out between the stone, lyrium veins standing out in the dark.

Alistair, though, seems to have worse nightmares the farther they press into the Deep Roads.

He tosses and turns by the fire for the first few nights, chest plate clinking against the rocky ground because he refuses to take it off. Eventually, he gives up on sleep altogether, sitting close to the fire when he’s not on watch. He’s his lighthearted, caring self when they travel, but Surana can see the shadows forming under his eyes.

She supposes she wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t having the same nightmares, the same vivid dreams of twisting bodies and leathery, bloodstained wings. For the same reason, she knows that he doesn’t want to talk about it. Some terrible things don’t recede with words.

So they sit in front of a fire that is their only light tonight and talk quietly about the plans for tomorrow’s journey, lapsing into silences broken only by the crackle of fire and the drip of distant water. They have been resting in comfortable silence for long enough that Surana thinks she might be able to sleep restfully tonight, when she darts a glance at Alistair and finds him watching her closely. She looks away.

He asks, earnest and quiet, “Why do your eyes glow like that?” She ducks her head back towards the fire, angling her eyes further away from his scrutiny. “Zevran’s do that, too.”

“Did you just notice?” She says it lightly, though still she doesn’t look at him. From his huff of air, she can tell he’s smiling.

“Of course not! We _are_ fond of traveling in the dark, all cloak-and-dagger.”

A laugh—perilously close to a _giggle_ , Maker take her—bubbles up in her belly, and though she tries to force it down, it threads out, high and thin. She coughs.

“Look at me a lot in the dark, do you?”

“Oh, um—Maker’s breath. I didn’t ask before because I didn’t want to put my foot in my mouth, but I suppose it’s much more comfortable there.” She dares a peek at him to find his hand resting over his face, eyes tipped towards her and grinning. “It seems to happen more often than not around you.”

A warm flush creeps up her chest and neck, like the feeling the first time Oghren gave her some of his foul-smelling dwarven brew. This, between them—the gentle teasing, soft smiles—is familiar, and she craves the lightning in her veins just as strongly as she wants to tear it out. Sometimes, when they do this—whether she pulls away or teases back matters not—Alistair’s smile goes impossibly wide, his eyes impossibly soft. She can’t stand to see if it’s happening now, so she turns back towards his question.

“Elves see better than humans in the dark. It’s like the way cats—well, I’m not sure. I don’t know very much about it. Our eyes are different than yours, is all.” A thought strikes her, and she frowns, biting her lip. “I’m…sorry if it was frightening, or—or off-putting. Sometimes I forget that not all humans are used to it. I don’t have much cause to look at myself in the dark.”

“No! I—” His hand is suddenly on her arm, warm and light and so much bigger than her own. She glances up sharply, flinching—towards him or away, she’s not sure. “I—I think they’re very beautiful. Your eyes. That is.”

She cannot manage words around the thick hesitation in her mouth. “I’m sure Zevran would appreciate the sentiment, as well. He does so love compliments,” she forces out.

Surana is aware that it’s a poor deflection. She was not recruited into the Wardens for her skill with words.

Only when Alistair withdraws his hand, face somewhat crumpled in discomfort, does she realize how pleasant it was, gently resting over her wrist. She wants, suddenly and intensely, to lean against his broad shoulder and let the heat he carries with him soak into her cold, narrow bones.

She swallows.

“When…In the Circle, they—the Templars, that is—most of them had never seen an elf before then. My eyes startled many of them.”

She does not speak of the Circle often. Parts of her life there she misses like an open wound. It is a surprisingly apt metaphor, she finds, now that she has experienced the hollow bleed of an actual wound. It was her home, but even now, she remembers when the shine of her eyes surprised a Templar on the stairs. She still holds on to railings harder than she really needs to.

But she feels she owes Alistair something, some comfort from his nightmares. He seems honestly curious, anyways, and they have shared so much of their lives with each other already.

Alistair is frowning thoughtfully. “The Templars there had not seen an alienage before?”

“Most had lived in towns too small for one. Or they were noblemen’s younger sons, who had no cause to visit. There were not many elves in the Circle Tower, either. Many go to the Dales, I’ve heard.”

“You didn’t.”

“I manifested young.”

She’s not even really sure if she was born to the Dales or to an alienage. Sometimes, in the Circle, she would look at her narrow face’s reflection in the high windows and try to imagine it inked with vallaslin. An older elf taken from a Dalish clan had them, and had been kind enough to answer her young and foolish questions about them.

“I remember, when I was younger, there was a new Templar who found me reading in the herbalist’s pantry in the basement.” She chuckles. “He thought I was a demon. Not very bright. First Enchanter Irving was so angry to be sumoned from his office just to look at an apprentice reading a copy of the Chant.”

Alistair smiles his crooked grin that means he’s enjoying listening to her. She doubts anyone has been as interested in the silly tales of an elvhen mage. “You read the Chant for fun as a child? My nurses tried to convince me to do that for _years_.”

“Hm?” She tilts her head and cards back through her story, laughs. “Oh! No. I was reading some pages from one of Brother Genitivi’s books that I’d ripped out and stuffed in my prayer book.” At Alistair’s furrowed brow, she adds, “The Templars didn’t like us having information about, well…” Anything other than the Chant and approved spell instruction manuals, really. She shrugs under Alistair’s gaze. “They were afraid it would give us ideas about leaving. And, well, look at me now, I suppose.”

His eyes are shimmering with laughter. “Running all over the place. In _Orzammar_ , honestly. You’re a Templar’s worst nightmare,” he says, and she worries for a split moment that that means _his_ worst—but he’s grinning, broken-open and soft as a nug.

Somehow, he must sense her hesitation, because after a moment of stretched silence, he clears his throat, says, “You know I’m not a Templar, right?”

 _Anymore_ , the small and scared part of her left in the wreckage of Kinloch Hold whispers. But that’s not fair. She knows that.

“You’d make a poor Templar, anyways. You only remember the juicy bits of the Chant. I’ve heard you pray.”

She’s expecting him to laugh, but his face is rather more serious than she’s used to seeing and—nervous?

“I just mean, well. I’m not a Templar, so. You can, uh. Look at me sometimes. I mean. If you wanted.”

Her mouth falls open.

“Oh, Maker, that was presumptuous. It’s just that—you mentioned, before, about the Templars—they didn’t encourage you to look. At…them… And you always—you never…” He trails off, averting his eyes and running a hand through his hair. For a brief moment, she thinks she sees hurt dash across his face. “You always look away, so fast, and you hardly ever look me in the eye. I would hate for you to feel as though you cannot…” He makes a frustrated sound at his own inability to mold his thoughts into words. It is one of the many things that they share.

“Is this you…encouraging me to look, then?”

“Just…if you want to!”

“Even…Even with my eyes? Being so…elfy?”

He glances at her sharply, and as his eyes gently run over her face, she thinks it might be the most openly the two of them have ever looked at each other.

Eventually, he smiles softly, looking young and so, so scared that it shocks her down to her bones. What has she ever done to deserve so open a face, so sincere an expression?

“I am rather fond of your eyes,” he admits, like a closely held secret, so light and fragile that she feels she must cradle it in her palms to keep it safe. “And…your face.”

In her time at the Circle Tower and in her travels, many men and women have looked at her too-large eyes, the narrow press of her face and too-small features, her strange nose and stranger ears, and said things that have chilled her arms and halted her steps. But this…no one has said anything like this, so gentle and true.

“Thank you.”

She is aware of an involuntary smile pulling at her lips as she lets herself slowly lean against Alistair’s side. He is warm and solid as his arm comes around her, so strong and so hesitant. For a moment, she thinks she sees the shine of Zevran’s eyes from the direction of their bedrolls, and knows there will be ribbing tomorrow.

Alistair lightly squeezes her shoulder, and not even the nightmares can touch them, tonight. They are too warm here.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [sightsoblind](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sightsoblind/pseuds/sightsoblind) for the awesome prompt! it...kind of ran away from me into elf feels.
> 
> guess who's a fan of the DA2 redesign of the elves? *raises hand* i had to double-check that the glowing eyes thing was canon, and apparently it's in the tie-in novels, so...guess it's time to read those.


End file.
